Customer Spotlight: Babusi Nyoni’s Responsive Photography Website

Babusi Nyoni does not identify as a web developer despite the repertoire of work he’s created using Dreamweaver CC which now lives on the web. He’s the art director for all things digital at M&C SAATCHI ABEL, South Africa’s fastest growing agency which is part of the largest independent agency network in the world. His keen eye for design and experience working in web design is likely what drew us to his Behance profile.

“Development is something new that I took up out of curiosity and decided to pursue after discovering I had a talent for it,” said Nyoni.

Some people simply ooze creativity and need an outlet to express it for self-fulfillment. Nyoni built out his skill set to do just that, leveraging several apps from the Creative Cloud to bring his ideas to life. His passion was clear in his answer to our question, ‘what’s your favorite part of the job?’

“It’s the almost-tangible joy of bringing something new into the world as a creator,” said Nyoni. “Sometimes creatives take their ability to make stuff for granted but I’m forever enchanted with the prospect of birthing something unseen and unheard of to the world whenever I set out to create.”

We asked Nyoni some questions about one of his featured projects, Steven Chikosi Photography. Chikosi, a talented peer, was looking to refresh the look of his existing blog and didn’t want to use an unoriginal theme, so Nyoni set to work on an original design.

“My greatest challenge was restricting the interface to a blog layout while still keeping it bold and using design elements that the predominantly Zimbabwean audience could relate to,” said Nyoni. “Inasmuch as he’s a photographer, Steve [Chikosi] didn’t want this site to serve as a portfolio.”

Nyoni wanted to communicate to users that Chikosi travels a lot and captures images across a broad subject-matter spectrum. All design restrictions considered, he tapped into the Creative Cloud to make things happen.

“I used Illustrator CC for the website wireframing and design because I find the workspace quite intuitive,” said Nyoni. “It allows me to work on multiple design screens without having to toggle windows or layers to access them.”

Once he had the bold blog design he was going for, Nyoni moved it into Dreamweaver CC to bring it to life with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP for WordPress.

“I used Dreamweaver because of how easy it makes working with dynamically related files be and how it totally understands PHP syntax,” said Nyoni. “Live View also lets me work on the look of the site without having to switch between text-editor and browser.”

In the end, Nyoni created a fully-responsive website with clean white spaces, easy-to-read type, Zimbabwean graphic elements and a canvas to display Chikosi’s diverse photography.

In terms of work overall, Nyoni says he’s inspired by a few different people who include:

Sindiso Nyoni:
“One of South Africa’s most prolific and universally revered illustrators. His work has never lost its African roots regardless of the subject matter.”

Lindsay Munro

You can often find Lindsay Munro scouring the web for the latest trends in web and experience design, and at industry events tweeting up a storm. Lindsay is a fan of cats, creative baking, and all things social.